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How to Write Effective Email Subject Lines to Help You Sell to Churches

posted on February 22, 2017

[podcast src=”https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/5109149/height/45/width/450/theme/standard/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/” height=”45″ width=”450″]Below is the text of the Podcast above along with the suggestions for Subject Lines for email you use to reach out to churches. You can print out this post using the little printer icon below the text to use the information at a sales meeting.

How to Write Effective Email Subject Lines to Help You Sell to Churches

Recently a Church Salesperson emailed and asked me about how to write effective email subject lines in response to this article encouraging sales people to contact churches via email:

I realized this is information that will be helpful to everyone, so that’s why I’m posting it on the SELL to Churches site and doing the PODCAST, though the format is an answer to one person.

Let’s start by stating the obvious: Writing effective email subject lines that get a response is incredibly difficult, but with that said I think the following information may be useful.

Before putting this together, I read several articles on writing email subject lines with the idea that if any of them were useful I could forward them to you and be done with it. But after going through many of them, I concluded most of them don’t apply to churches. Some of the short, snappy, catchy, create-urgency kinds of advice sound canned and are a real turn off. Instead of referring you to them, I pulled out some tips and thought about the kind of email I open and what people seem to respond to in the emails I sent.

Overall, I’m assuming you are planning on sending a SERIES of emails. One or two won’t accomplish much, but if you get into a schedule of sending out one or two a week with useful tips, information and offers after a time people will get used to seeing you and trust the information you have.

One more important background piece. You must genuinely want to HELP churches for this to be successful. AND you can. Churches need you and the printing equipment you sell to accomplish their goals. The more you understand the church, the more you understand their goals the more you can become a real partner in the communication ministry of the church.

With that as background, here are a few suggestions.

Tell them what is inside: This is the most simple, best overall advice. Don’t be tricky or mislead. Be honest. You want to build a relationship so they won’t block you or automatically ignore your emails

Summarize a key benefit, but don’t oversell (these are all ComColor benefits)

Get your bulletin printing done in half the time

NEW Machine, half the energy costs to print

Would you like to print postcards, envelopes and door hangers in the church office?

Free booklet for Church Office Printing Success (have the e-book I made for the sales team How a RISO ComColor Inkjet can help your Church attached or describe it and tell them you will deliver it—it is here on the selltochurches.com site for you to download)

Or special offers from your company:

Spring Special—FREE service contract for 6 months, how to get yours

Let us print your Easter bulletin (or outreach or door hangers or postcards) for you (and don’t cheap out by not providing paper)

Let us help meet your Easter printing deadlines

Nuggets of expertise—you have my permission to pull articles from the www.effectivechurchcom.com website—please just link back to it, but you can use whatever you like, you have my permission to do that so long as you provide the link.

Tips for successful Easter Outreach

Free booklet: How to Stop Decline in Church Attendance, may I send it to you?

Recipe for Greek Easter Bread, an outreach treat we can print up for you

Skim through the articles and pull out the titles, any of them will be useful (they get a response to my emails)

Be human, ask questions

“I really want to help your church print ministry, can you tell me how?”

What is most important to you in church printing? Speed, cost, reliability?

A few last thoughts:

Don’t have high expectations of immediate return. Statistics of email response (and this is still considered one of the best ways to market) is that you will get an Open rate in the 20% range and a click through rate of less than 5%. That means that if you send out 100 emails, 20 will open them and less than 5 will click through to an article or respond in any way.

HOWEVER, don’t let this discourage you. This is even more reason to write good subject lines because even if we don’t open every email, the consistency of your subject lines lets your audience get to know you.

Your response rate can increase over time as you commit to providing useful information to your church clients. Again, you have a huge resource in my www.effectivechurchcom.com website. Make the most of it, help churches and they will get to know that you are a source they can trust not only for information, but for equipment to make their print ministry effective.